On March 1, 2018, the Andrew Lawton Show (AM980, London, Ontario) hosted a debate involving three of the four candidates for the leadership of the Ontario PC Party: Tanya Granic-Allen, Doug Ford, and Christine Elliott (Caroline Mulroney declined her invitation). On March 2, 2018, Lawton had representatives from two other political parties on his show to discuss the issue of how the three candidates had performed on the debate: the Ontario Liberal Party’s Deb Matthews (MPP for the riding of London North Centre and former Deputy Premier of Ontario) followed by Freedom Party leader Paul McKeever.

In his interview with McKeever, Lawton canvassed a number of issues. Former PC leader Patrick Brown (who resigned when accused by anonymous women of sexual “misconduct”) had already introduced the PC’s 2018 Election Platform, which offered a number of new spending items (including tax credits for the purchase of snow tires, dentistry subsidies etc.), all funded by a federal carbon levy. However, all of the candidates to replace Brown oppose the levy, which was widely recognized to raise the question of how the PCs would pay for the billions of dollars in new spending set out in their 2018 election platform (a point echoed by Matthews during her interview with Lawton). Accordingly, after discussing the (in)competency of the PC leadership candidates, Lawton focused primarily upon the issues of resolving the problem with the PC platform, and of balancing the the Ontario budget. McKeever gave an example – drawn from Freedom Party’s numerous Opposition Budgets – of how the budget could be balanced while improving access to healthcare in the province.

You can listen to the March 1 debate, to Lawton’s interview with Matthews, and to Lawton’s interview with McKeever, below.